IS THAT IT?

I have just completed Homefront on the X Box 360 and I have to say that I am disappointed.

It's not that the game is rubbish, it's just that it is so short in the single player campaign department.  Yet again it seems that game developers are taking liberties with the single player elements of their games and instead are focusing on the multiplayer aspect.  I don't really think that this is on at all.

Now I do play online so the following does not really apply to me, but surely those who prefer a single player game are entitled to a well developed and complete campaign?  Homefront ends suddenly and is so unsatisfying that it is hard to believe that the ending we get is the ending that John Milius who had a hand in writing the story actually penned when he wrote the story.  It is clear that there is an intent to release more of the game as either DLC or as a sequel.  Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against game sequels, but when you sit down and develop a game and release it you cannot structure that game around the assumption that you can just end the game seemingly half way through and expect people to invest more money just to see it's conclusion.

Given the fact that it took me around 5 hours to complete the single player campaign leads me to believe that this game was in fact cut in half so that a sequel could be made.  For a FPS the campaign should be no shorter than 10 hours to play through.  Most well developed FPS's adhere to this whilst some that are either rush jobs or cash in sequels (cough Call of Duty cough) have chosen to fob off gamers with awful single player modes and I reckon it's time gamers started to vote with their wallets.

If you are just buying the latest Call of Duty for the multiplayer, then why bother?  Has it really changed that much since Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare?  It still uses the silly ranking up system (a topic for another rant) and still has the same basic mechanics.  OK the scenarios and maps are different but so what?  Is it really worth £40 just for that?  PC modders have been converting games for years and in many cases doing a hell of a lot better job than the actual developers and what's more, their content is free, not some overcharged pile of crap that console owners put up with.

I know companies have to make money.  But it is a tired excuse and frankly if you are happy to pay the same amount of money for less content then you are an idiot, plain and simple.  The moment you give these companies any scope to do less they will do, you simply have to keep on at them.

Annoying someone from Kaos studios who developed Homefront went on record to say that if the games playing public want a bigger single player campaign in future Homefront games then they will have to ask for it!  What a wonderful attitude.  And how many Homefront users will it take for Kaos studios to make the campaign larger?  Probably at least 60% of those that purchased it and let's be honest that's not going to happen because the majority of people who own the game would probably have not even been aware that Kaos studios issued that statement.

It is about time that games reviewers started to really mark down the games for having a poor single player campaign.  It is about time that these reviewers stopped worrying about sponsorship deals and freebies and actually started to act in the best interest of the gamers out there which is what they should be doing.

Unless this is nipped in the bud now, it will get much worse in time and once again it will be the end user that loses out.